Monday, May 12, 2008

Is Japan trying to militarise space?

A new law expected to be passed by the Japanese parliament will allow the country to have a military presence in space for the first time.

But don't panic. Japan isn't gearing up to make space into a shooting gallery. The country wants to bolster its space operations so it can keep a wary eye on North Korea and China, and so it can develop its own space industry.

Japan has been feeling uneasy and bolstering its defenses in recent years - in December, for example, it launched a sea-based interceptor that destroyed a test missile over the Pacific in the first test of the country's missile-defence system, which is based on US technology. North Korea sparked the unease by pressing for the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. China's anti-satellite test last year only added to the anxiety.

Yet the resolution that established Japan's space agency in 1969 limited it to peaceful purposes. When Japan decided it needed a spy satellite to watch North Korea, for example, the government had to go through a series of contortions to satisfy its own rules - including having the office of the prime minister operate the satellite.

The new bill will allow Japan's Ministry of Defense to deploy satellites for non-aggressive missions, including communications, surveillance and weather observations, as is routinely done by the military agencies of other countries. Industry is backing the move as a step towards creating a powerful space industry. The government is expected to follow by establishing a central space policy council to develop a national space strategy.

"This is a major change in Japanese space policy," says space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University in Washington, DC, US.

For many years, scientists and engineers have run the country's space programme for their own purposes. Logsdon told New Scientist that the change will "allow Japan to carry out military programmes as long as they are non-aggressive, and raise the profile of space within Japanese government".

Ideally that would allow Japan to develop a more ambitious and more coherent space programme. But will that really work? And in the long term, might efforts to improve the country's defences lead Japan to consider putting interceptors in orbit? Where will this "defensive" strategy end?

With a probable incoming Democratic president and a long, unpopular war drawing to an unpleasant end, Japan needs to change it's constitution to allow for a more robust military. The US will no longer be willing, or able, against the Chinese, to defend Japan. The US is in decline, China on the rise ... and still has an ax to grind with Japan over WWII.

The US is not on the decline as much as you say. Our military is still the best in the world, and there is no way the American people will allow such an incompetent democratic president in office no matter how much radical socialists like him. The majority of Americans wont vote to end the war because that would turn Iraq into another Vietnam.

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